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Steve Jobs Once Tossed the Original iPhone Across a Room to Impress Journalists
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You said it wasn't like an addiction. For some people it is. You used your daughter as an example that also wasn't relevant.
I disagree with that statement. In my opinion what that statement should be is 'Apple still make products that Apple fans want'. The evidence of this is the amount of MR news reports on Apple being sued for something and in the report Apple sometimes makes the argument that the product/item in question is not the most wanted because the company is not No.1 in that catergory.
Two very good examples of this is the current ongoing court case with Epic and the current ongoing discussion within MR about Apple getting into gaming. In the MR threads about the court case with Epic, it is always argued that in the global smartphone market, Apple is actually a small player. Figures are constantly mentioned about how small the percentage is that Apple has in the smarthphone market. It is the same with the discussion about Apple and gaming that whilst Apple do have games written for them, their percentage in the computer gaming market is extremely small.
Therefore, if the statement of 'Apple still make products people want' then Apple would be at the top of the charts on everything they produce. The fact they are not tells me that that statement is false.
I think the statement that 'Apple still make products people want' is fair.
It would be incorrect to say that 'Apple still make products that everybody want'.
I kind of hope the next generation will reject them massively and get their damn heads up. The amount of parents I see in the park gawping at their screens while their kids play or want some attention is awful. (This is said as a father of a near 2 year old that wants to look at photos of herself of the phone all the time)
To be even fairer... I owned my own computer since 1992, and it wasn't instilling violent thoughts back then. Ok - maybe things were thrown across the room when I couldn't kill the Black Knight...
It really isn't the iPhone at fault, it's the social media. And even then - I've been using "forums" since - well, since bulletin boards died. (They are dead, aren't they?) And I'm still not being incensed to climb the Capitol and try to kill Pelosi.
However... I'm spending a lot of my time lately, on numerous forums, trying to convince people to vaccinate... ****, forums are bad, too. Burn MacRumors!
(This in no way is to be taken seriously, my good friends. I love each and every one of you. You are all special people.)
People say it's not the iphones fault for the way some of society is today, to some degree I disagree. The technology that encompasses the iphone was already out there amoungst the other mobile phone manufacturers so it can be argued it was only a question of time before someone decided to merge all that technology into one. If it wasn't Apple it surely would have been another technology company, even maybe one of the big mobile phone manufacturers.
The iphone allowed one thing that the other mobile phone manufactureres did not and that was/is to allow 3rd party companies and private individuals to write software applications and have them displayed on the phone. Suddenly light bulb moments were going off around the world, companies and individuals were coming up with ways to get the world around them into the hands of phone owners. Whilst virtually everything was available and accessible via a computer it still meant that a person had to sit down at a computer terminal. With an iphone, that computer terminal could in a sense go with them. Yes owners of iphones could still get access to all the stuff that a computer terminal could do but it was considered slow and cumbersome. Once the introduction of the iphone came along, users of the phone quickly realised that they could access the phones apps quicker than they could websites via the phones web browser. This got people and companies thinking, if they could get an app designed for the iphone, users of the phone would be able to see what a company had to other much quicker than if the person had tried to get to the website via the iphone.
As iphone numbers increased so did the number of people designing software apps. Why wait for an individual to finish work or education to then get onto their computer and get all the things they wanted, games, news, connections to friends, other information sources, online buying, listening to music, watching videos, when all of that could come to the individual in the palm of their hand 24 hours a day, accessable whenever they wanted and wherever they wanted.
Individuals and companies started to write more and more apps and the users of the iphone realised just exactly what they had in their hand, a device that allowed them to be connected to the world and everything in it 24hrs a day. This drove an insatiable appetite of iphone users wanting more and the software app developers delivered.
The iphone is at fault in my opinion because it tapped into one of human natures worst traits 'I want it all and I want it now'. No longer did people have to wait in ques at banks or in shops (could order it via an app on their iphone), no que waiting on the phone, no longer having to wait for a friend to get home, they could contact them instantly via message of use of video function. Human nature still has this 'I want it and I want it now desire' of which companies and individuals are fully aware of and are more than willing to accommodate.
Us humans are our own worst enemy. Apple provided humanity with a device that allows humans to continue to be it's worst enemy.
The iphone allowed one thing that the other mobile phone manufactureres did not and that was/is to allow 3rd party companies and private individuals to write software applications and have them displayed on the phone. Suddenly light bulb moments were going off around the world, companies and individuals were coming up with ways to get the world around them into the hands of phone owners. Whilst virtually everything was available and accessible via a computer it still meant that a person had to sit down at a computer terminal. With an iphone, that computer terminal could in a sense go with them. Yes owners of iphones could still get access to all the stuff that a computer terminal could do but it was considered slow and cumbersome. Once the introduction of the iphone came along, users of the phone quickly realised that they could access the phones apps quicker than they could websites via the phones web browser. This got people and companies thinking, if they could get an app designed for the iphone, users of the phone would be able to see what a company had to other much quicker than if the person had tried to get to the website via the iphone.
As iphone numbers increased so did the number of people designing software apps. Why wait for an individual to finish work or education to then get onto their computer and get all the things they wanted, games, news, connections to friends, other information sources, online buying, listening to music, watching videos, when all of that could come to the individual in the palm of their hand 24 hours a day, accessable whenever they wanted and wherever they wanted.
Individuals and companies started to write more and more apps and the users of the iphone realised just exactly what they had in their hand, a device that allowed them to be connected to the world and everything in it 24hrs a day. This drove an insatiable appetite of iphone users wanting more and the software app developers delivered.
The iphone is at fault in my opinion because it tapped into one of human natures worst traits 'I want it all and I want it now'. No longer did people have to wait in ques at banks or in shops (could order it via an app on their iphone), no que waiting on the phone, no longer having to wait for a friend to get home, they could contact them instantly via message of use of video function. Human nature still has this 'I want it and I want it now desire' of which companies and individuals are fully aware of and are more than willing to accommodate.
Us humans are our own worst enemy. Apple provided humanity with a device that allows humans to continue to be it's worst enemy.
Exactly! Fully agree with your analysis. Now we get distracted all the time weather we are at work or school, we are constantly checking our phones it is just detrimental to our psyche and every day interactions, smartphones in a way have become a religion, a personal god that we worship and can't live without it. Me personally, I hate browsing and checking emails on my iPhone, I try as much as possible to do that stuff on my Mac, even texting and FaceTiming I prefer to do all of that from my Mac and for some years now, both me and my wife we don't sleep with our phones next to our bed, we leave them in the other room.
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I am the same as you, my iphone does not control my life. I use it as a traditional mobile phone, to allow myself and others to get in contact with me in cases of emergency. Yes I know my iphone can do so so much more but I have no need for all the extra's, and yes, it was the same with android phones when I had them.
The only app I regularly use on my iphone is my banks banking app and that is only because it forced me too because they closed down my local branch and put all banking functions into their iphone app. If there is stuff i need to do that requires the use of the internet, I will wait till I get home from work and use my computer. Yes I can do what i need to do on the iphone but I chose to wait till I get home to use the desktop computer. I stay in control of my life, I do not need or allow the iphone to control my life.
I've been around this block as well. I will say though that I distinctly remember trolls on forums and (very) heated arguments looooooong before social media. Or, "social media" as we think of it today. Political and otherwise.
I still watch this Keynote time to time. It's phone, its a iPod it's a computer. and the usual suspect line. When he say about plastic keyboards.
and then he said " Boy have we patented it"
I was screaming out of my lungs.. I use to use Nokia 9500 Communicator and Sony Ericsson P910 with female voice ringtone " Ring Ring ring " lol I still have the ring tone saved to my iPhone 13 Pro.
waited from mid night to next day afternoon.
He changed the world. one device murdered 100's of companies but created 1000s new. I remembered Steve Balmer remarks and there was his picture using iPhone few months later.
Crazy those 13 years.
and then he said " Boy have we patented it"
I was screaming out of my lungs.. I use to use Nokia 9500 Communicator and Sony Ericsson P910 with female voice ringtone " Ring Ring ring " lol I still have the ring tone saved to my iPhone 13 Pro.
waited from mid night to next day afternoon.
He changed the world. one device murdered 100's of companies but created 1000s new. I remembered Steve Balmer remarks and there was his picture using iPhone few months later.
Crazy those 13 years.
Apple was worth around half a trillion dollars before he passed and that was after the near bankruptcy of Apple when he left the company back in the day. He’s very much the reason Apple is as big as they are today.
You are not supposed to opine on editorial quality or issues you find in the articles right in the thread. There is a separate place for it: Site and Forum Feedback
I know of my iPhone 4S that survived a fall to a tiled floor unscathed. Nothing at all.
On the other hand, iPhone 5 suffered slight dent to the "aloominium" band, along with the paint chip off. A 7 suffered a light dent, no paint chip off.
To me, the 4S was far more durable. I do not trust the later devices. Maybe the 12 and 13 are improved. No wonder Jobs took that risk. He probably knew just how to toss it to minimise impact, or that device was built differently to account for that toss for journalists.
On the other hand, iPhone 5 suffered slight dent to the "aloominium" band, along with the paint chip off. A 7 suffered a light dent, no paint chip off.
To me, the 4S was far more durable. I do not trust the later devices. Maybe the 12 and 13 are improved. No wonder Jobs took that risk. He probably knew just how to toss it to minimise impact, or that device was built differently to account for that toss for journalists.
Apple never made products that everybody wanted. Sure, a lot of people wanted them, but a lot more didn't and set off to find alternatives almost immediately. Palm users lamented that the IPhone didn't have its Griffiti interface; the Blackberry folks openly mocked the iPhone for not having anything comparable to its encrypted messaging app; and even some flip-phone users wouldn't entertain the thought of a phone without a hinge or multi-day battery life.
We want the iPhone now, but Steve had to convince us at the time.
Ah, so your argument is that unless Apple is a market leader then it is not making products that people want. The problem with that is Apple does not compete in some markets equally. Apple does not sell cheap anything so they are not competing at that end of the market, and "cheap" represents a great part of most markets.
In order to actually compare Apples to apples, let's look at Apple's year-over-year sales. Pretty consistently they have been going up, with a couple exceptions, for more than a decade. Since your premise is that Apple only sells to Apple fans clearly Apple is making more fans all the time. And that is a very good thing. Pretty simple, actually.
They're related but not the same thing. Apple can maximize profits for the next several years just by adjusting their business and not introducing anything too new. They could even get greedy and piss off their customers, and it wouldn't bite them for a long time (see 90s-2000s MSFT). This only stops working when a competitor makes something revolutionary.
Right now they're steadily improving their stuff, but it's not like the 2000s. They're definitely focusing more on squeezing profit out of existing products than on blazing new trails. They aren't going Ballmer on their customers but have been getting a little greedy. If you want an exciting company like 2000s Apple, today that's Tesla.
Btw, Google is the same but worse. They'll never be anything but ads + search + YT, which is why they're trying to milk those more. Yeah they're also trying new things, but it's always half-assed. So don't say I'm hating on Apple.
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So things like AirPods, Apple Watch, Apple Silicon, and services do not exist in your reality? Check out this list of Apple product development and you will see your vision of the "exciting 2000s" is rose coloured because of the glasses you are looking back through.
And by the way, Apple's profit margins on products have remained essentially unchanged for more than a decade. The only way they have been able to increase their revenues substantially and their overall profit (there is a difference here you seem to be missing between profit margin and overall profits) is by selling more stuff. Which more people are buying. Check out their quarterly reports, I am honestly not making this up.
They're not exciting compared to revolutionizing personal computing. AS is the biggest leap, and it's really just a technical thing. All the new services are just natural expansions that every big tech company is doing nowadays, especially TV/movies.
Also screw AirPods in particular; nobody used BT headphones until Apple started coercing people into it by removing the jack.
I was first in line at 8am in St. Louis at AT&T for the iPhone that went on sale at 6pm. It was super exciting. The line got long after a few hours.